When you woke up. A poem

Sometimes I wonder if I am an example of a midlife crisis.
Sometimes I wonder if I just missed an important lesson that everyone else must have learned a long time ago.
Maybe I missed that lesson because I was drunk?
Maybe I was shopping?
Maybe I was busy? I was probably busy. Or distracted.
Maybe I am, like you, a product of my environment, a product of the universe.

When did you wake up?

You didn’t get to pick your parents.
You didn’t get to pick where you were born, nor did you have anything at all to say about which period of time, epoch, age, century, you arrived in. You just appeared.
From where?
When were you born?
Were you (un)lucky enough to be raised as a consumer, a worker, an informed citizen in the “democracy?”

Oh, c’mon now. Be grateful!

Did you ever wonder why the things that happen to you, for you, in your life, happen to you, for you, in your life?
Did you ever wonder why he doesn’t see it the way you see it?
Did you ever wonder, “why don’t I see it the way he sees it?”
Did you ever wonder why your teenagers aren’t rebellious?
What happened to mud pies?

When did you wake up?

When did everything you knew, even the ways you knew,
everything on every single billboard that flashed itself in front of you,
everything on chalkboards that you were forced to sit in front of,
everything you inherited,
everything you believed about yourself and the world and others and therefore the choices that you made because you thought you were making “good” choices based on your very “good” ways of knowing
turn out to be false?

You didn’t get to choose that moment.
You didn’t get to choose insanity, irresponsibility, incompatibility. The Loneliness.